The focus of this week is on Chapter 7: Confidence Intervals and Sample Size . The goals are to learn the basic concepts of statistical estimation with special focus on estimating the mean of a population or a distribution. This week, you will study sections 3 and 4 in this chapter. You will learn how to estimate mean of a population using a confidence interval using the t-distribution. The estimation method in section 3 is for small sample from a normal population and it is also good for large sample situation and you will use the t-distribution table in the computation. This is a more practical formula and is the one that is usually used in estimating mean of a population. Section 4, is about estimating the proportion of a certain category in a population. You will also learn how to determine sample size before collecting the data.

You may start the materials in Chapter 8 for Week 10 as soon as you finished Chapter 7. Don’t wait till Week 10. Chapter 8 is about Hypothesis testing and is one of the most important materials in this course. It helps you understand the basic concept in hypothesis testing and is crucial for understand all the other hypothesis testing procedures in statistics.

To assist you in doing the term project paper, I created two project examples “stop sign” and “fast food order” for you to follow. Please see the term project description for these two examples. You can follow either one of the two ideas for your term project paper if you wish. There are few more examples in the Blackboard Term Project Proposal (extra credit) assignment. However, I prefer that you create your own project idea. Paper using your own idea is likely to get a better grade.

Your mid-term paper is due soon. There is no limitation on the length of the paper. Three to five pages of writing including the statistical tables and charts would be enough. Please feel free to consult with me on any questions about the project.

To Do List:

1.Read sections 3 and 4 in chapter 7.

2.Download lecture notes and view recorded lecture for chapter 7 (V.33 and V. 34). (The lecture notes are on the right next to video links in the lecture video web page.)

3.Try the review exercise problems for sections 3 and 4 for chapter 7.

4.If possible start Week 10.

Assignments: (For details click on the following underscored links.)

2.You can try part 1 of Assignment 4: Inference on Mean and Proportion.[Due Wednesday of Week 11 through Blackboard Assignment Dropbox]Feel free to contact me if you have questions in understanding how to do confidence interval estimation. Also, view SPSS video instructions to learn how to use the software to compute the interval.

3.Submit the Blackboard term project proposal assignment through blackboard assignment dropbox, and prepare the mid-term paper.